Month: October 2014

For anyone interested in the Martyrology, or the Church’s “sanctoral cycle,” November 1 is an especially uplifting feast. By venerating all saints at once, this celebration more than any other day of the year invites reflection on the very phenomenon of venerating saints. Today’s entry in the older Martyrology highlights the origin of the feast:

The Festival of All Saints, which Pope Boniface IV, after the dedication of the Pantheon, ordained to be kept generally and solemnly every year, in the city of Rome, in honor of the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and of the holy martyrs. It was afterwards decreed by Gregory IV that this feast, which was then celebrated in many dioceses, but at different times, should be on this day kept by the whole Church in honor of all saints.

The 2004 edition of the Martyrology focuses on the goals of the feast:

The solemnity of all Saints who with Christ are in glory, by which, under the joy of one feast, the holy Church still in pilgrimage on earth venerates the memory of those whose society causes heaven to rejoice, so that she may be spurred on by their example, may rejoice in their protection, and may be crowned by their triumph in the sight of the divine majesty unto endless ages.

Of the three goals listed, the first two are standard. Mediator Dei 166-168 and Sacrosanctum Concilium 104 and other sources teach that we venerate the saints in order to be instructed and encouraged by their example and in order to benefit from the protection of their prayers. But the third goal listed in the Martyrology points to something more: that we “may be crowned by their triumph in the sight of the divine majesty unto endless ages.” What does it mean?

Of course, it could just mean that we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints so that we can be saints, too, that is, so that we can be crowned by a triumph just like their triumph. But I like to see in this words the stronger assertion that we will be crowned by their triumph. Because we are all citizens of one heavenly city and members of one mystical body, the glories of the saints are our glories, and to the degree that we make our calling and election sure (2Peter 1:10) we lay more permanent hold on the claim that their triumph is ours.

The reason I like this “strong” reading of the Martyrology is that it emphasizes our communion with the saints, the fact that we are bound together as one by the sharing of spiritual goods, as Leo XIII explains in Mirae Caritatis 12. And this opens onto the profound teaching of Lumen Gentium 50: “Nor is it by the title of example only that we cherish the memory of those in heaven, but still more in order that the union of the whole Church may be strengthened in the Spirit by the practice of fraternal charity.”

This beautiful sentence sets the definitive context for today’s Solemnity: the saints’ example is good for me, and the saints’ protection is good for me, but the fact that the saints and I are bound together by mutual attention and concern is good for the Church. In a given situation I may need an example to follow, and in a given situation I may need the help of someone’s prayer, but at all times and by her very nature the Church needs to have spiritual unity. Of course, the very fact that all the members receive life and direction from Christ the head makes the Church one in reality, but this good is incomplete until it is carried into action.

One can see this emphasis in that wonderful proto-martyrology, chapters 11 and 12 of the Letter to the Hebrews. After listing and commemorating one after another of the saints who have preceded us, the author says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…” (Heb 12:1). Even though the thrust of the whole passage is an appeal to the example of the saints, the image of being “surrounded” by a “cloud of witnesses” says much more than “Let’s be virtuous like those people back then were virtuous.” It says, “Your whole community is watching you and cheering for you and they understand what you are doing because they’ve done it too!” It says, “The saints are interested in you and your doings just as you are interested in them and theirs, and they rejoice in your victories as you rejoice in theirs!” This way of thinking of the saints’ example highlights the unity of the Church in the sharing of spiritual goods—something not only good for us or good for them but good for the Church as such.

In one sentence: Veneration of the saints in and of itself, even apart from answered prayers and examples emulated, builds up the Church.

P.S. Did you notice that the proto-martyrology is a catalogue of Biblical Saints?

The feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles, the first of whom was also called the Cananean or “the Zelot”; the other, also called Thaddeus, the son of Jacob, asked the Lord during the Last Supper about his manifestation, and the Lord replied: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and we will make our abode with him.”

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in pace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

During the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, I would guess the Internet saw an all-time high in occurrences of the word “pastoral”. Reactions were mixed: one person’s blog post about the events was praised as “pastoral,” and another person responded in the combox with “‘pastoral’—*gag*”. It is clear that for some the word captures the greatest virtue of a priest while for others it is, to quote Lord Business of the Lego Movie, “a bunch of hippy, dippy boloney!”

While I can understand flinching at the P-word, we can’t allow political in-fighting to hijack a venerable vocabulary. So I would like to stake a stab at saving “pastoral” from the extremes by suggesting a concrete content for a Catholic context.

When used in a Catholic setting, “pastoral” surely means having true concern for the people placed in one’s care. But in addition, it seems to me that “pastoral” means something like this: Treating people’s experiences as real facts on the table with all the other facts when you make a decision. This is opposed on the one hand to making “a good experience” the immediate goal of your decision (“hippy dippy”), and it is opposed on the other hand to pretending that people’s experiences are unreal. The first extreme is what we tend to call “pastoral” with an edge of sarcasm, while the second extreme is what we tend to call “unpastoral”.

Let me offer some examples to show what I mean. Outside the Catholic sphere, I was involved once in an online exchange with Latin teachers about the best way to teach Latin—I was teaching college Latin at the time. It was a highly charged conversation, with broad theories of language learning at stake. At one point I wrote something along the lines of, “I experienced X and Y while I was learning Latin.” The response I got was something like this: “No, you didn’t.”

Excuse me? I’m sorry, but I did.

In a fit of abstract commitment, those high school and college Latin teachers denied the reality of my experience rather than expand their theories to account for it. What could have been an interesting conversation ended with a jerk.

But that kind of denial is rampant in Catholic conversations. For example, I feel lifted up when I attend a Mass celebrated in Latin, and I am one of those people who think about the consequences of the Church’s global shift to the vernacular. My brother in law, a priest in the Diocese of Vienna, mentioned to me once that he has had numerous conversations in which older parishioners who lived through Vatican II told him they get more out of the Mass in German than they had done before in Latin. It is tempting, as a lover of Latin, to say, “No, you must be mistaken!” But at some point you just have to let their experience be one of the facts on the table.

These are examples of the temptation to “unrealize” someone’s experience. But treating someone’s experience as real does not mean that you make a “happy experience” your immediate goal.

When I was Academic Dean at Wyoming Catholic College, I took part once in a disciplinary decision. The student in question had not just broken the rules but smashed them, and that repeatedly, but still we were inclined to mercy. We didn’t want to be harsh. In the end, however, we decided that the most pastoral thing for this student was expulsion, because anything short of that would teach the student that there are no limits, that one can continue to abuse trust endlessly without consequence, and we feared that lesson would later destroy a friendship, a marriage, or even a relationship with God. We treated his experience, the pain of expulsion from our little community, as a reality—a medicinal one.

So how would this way of meaning “pastoral” apply to a hot-button issue like denying communion to the divorced and remarried? On the one hand, some may view their pain and distress as illegitimate and therefore unreal: they brought this on themselves through their sinful decisions, so we have no obligation to take their experience into account. On the other hand, some may view a happy experience on Sunday as the immediate goal to be reached: we don’t want people to experience pain and distress! That makes us the bad guys!

A pastoral decision, it seems to me, would avoid both extremes. The pain and the distress of the flock would be vivid for the true pastor, and would cause him pain as well; he would mourn with those who mourn. But the true pastor might decide in the end that this discomfort is needed in order to move his flock to a new and better position. Both in the bodily and in the spiritual realms, God has given us pain as a message about where green pastures lie.

On the one hand, a calloused recital of moral doctrine spares the pastor his uncomfortable obligation of weeping with those who weep, but it does not assure the distressed that he can interpret their experience for them. On the other hand, omitting true moral doctrine to alleviate the pain denies that their experience has any meaning needing interpretation in the first place; it is, to quote Pope Francis’s closing remarks at the Synod, “a deceptive mercy [that] binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots.”

The commemoration of Saint Joel the prophet, who announced the great day of the Lord and the mystery of the outpouring of his Spirit on all flesh, which the divine majesty deigned to carry out in a marvelous manner in Christ on the day of Pentecost.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in pace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

Although the previous posts have focused on individual parts of the college application, some general principles stand behind most of what I have said:

• Outside evaluation and opinion are valuable. This is one area where home schoolers often struggle.
• Story and detail are persuasive. This is one area where homeschoolers can have an advantage.
• The different parts of an application packet work together. Think about how an asset in one part can balance out a liability in another.

Now I would like to add another general principle: Be honest. Put your best foot forward, but don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

The college admission committee’s job is not to be a gatekeeper, screening out “imperfect” students; their job is to be a matchmaker, insuring that the right student ends up at the right college and in the best way. Often, though, we as parents prevent the committee from doing its job by failing to disclose our child’s academic weaknesses.

Of course, our temptation as parents is to paint over our child’s weaknesses, but that’s not the problem I have in mind. Instead, I’m thinking about one of home schooling’s great advantages, namely the fact that we as parents can adapt our schooling to fit a child’s needs exactly. As a result, even a child with very unusual academic problems can do well at home—and that’s wonderful! That’s a reason to home school!

But it can lead us into ignoring problems that will become obvious and glaring as soon as the child is thrown into a new setting. Once in a while I read an application that says something like, “Jane did not learn to read until she was fourteen,” and I flinch. Kids learn to read at different ages, but fourteen is late by anyone’s standards: does Jane have a learning disability that will suddenly become an issue when she arrives at college? Here is a sentence I have seen in one form or another many times: “While his poor handwriting and spelling may make writing exasperating, a good laptop with spell check will fix it.” This could be quite normal, or it could be that the laptop is masking dysgraphia and the spell check feature is hiding dyslexia.

We don’t want our kids in the schools where they will be quickly labeled with a “disability,” but on the other hand we shouldn’t let our kids go through life with a genuine but undiagnosed problem. I have seen the suffering this causes: instead of getting off to a good start with a sound strategy in place, the student falls behind his peers and gets into serious academic trouble before anyone realizes there is a problem. His teachers try to help, but they try all the wrong things because they don’t realize how different he is from his classmates. The student feels embarrassed and discouraged.

When the root of the problem is discovered, it’s like day dawning after a long storm. Suddenly the teachers feel empowered to offer help and exceptions to rules that otherwise would have felt unfair; suddenly the student can tap into all the strategies that all the other people with the same problem have discovered; suddenly we are dealing with reality, in the open air, instead of groping in the shadows.

But by this point there are already bad grades on the books. The student has already been through a very stressful year, and he may even have fallen back a year in school. Not knowing about his problem before he left home has caused a lot of unnecessary suffering.

The law does not permit colleges to ask about learning disabilities, because admissions committees are not supposed to discriminate against the applicant on the basis of those kinds of things. But if you figure out why your child is so different from his siblings and voluntarily disclose that in his college application, you will help the admissions committee play its matchmaking role by giving you the most honest judgment possible about whether the program is a good fit and by making sure your child gets the help he needs when he or she arrives.

I hope this blog post series has been helpful to you as you think about preparing your home schooled high schooler for college!

In this post I would like to offer just a couple of thoughts about the student essay. The essay contributes something very important to an application, because it is the only time the admissions committee gets to see your child’s work directly rather than as reported by a teacher or parent. It goes without saying that it should really be your child’s work—anything else would make this part of the application pointless! But assuming your child writes his or her own essay, here are some suggestions you can make as a parent.

First and foremost, the student needs to be told, “Show your own thought!” Most colleges ask for an essay about why the student wants to come to this particular college, and I don’t know how many essays I have read that basically said, “I want to come to Wyoming Catholic College because this is what the College website says.” Repeating what the website says is not helpful: we’re already convinced by our website, but we’re still waiting to be convinced by the applicant!

This problem comes up in more than one way. Our application form also asks the student to write an essay on some book that he or she considers good and to argue that people should read the book. All too often, the applicant writes an essay that is just a summary of the book: “In this book, Frodo goes on a long journey. He travels with friends.” It is good to know that the student can read a book and summarize it, but it would be even more helpful if the student would let us in on what she is thinking. She needs to show her own thought. Let us watch her mind in action: the essay should open the hood and let us see the engine running.

Second, tell your student to think about the admissions committee and how they will perceive things. This is just the age-old rhetorical truth that you need to think about your audience. Try to be different: guess what the admissions committee probably sees all the time and then write something else. For example, we ask students to write about a good book, so how many applications do you think we get that say, “My favorite book is The Lord of the Rings”? And try to sound like someone the admissions committee will perceive as ready for college. I recall reading an application in which the student wrote, “I think that every college student should read Where the Red Fern Grows.” I love that book, but my ten-year-old has read it. I wish the applicant had told me about a book that requires maturity of judgment and sensibility.

And with these few thoughts about the essay, we have finished my walk through the parts of the application. In my last post, I will offer a few concluding thoughts about home schoolers and the persuasive college application.

In this post, I want to focus on the high school transcript. Even transcripts from a private or public high school offer little to the admissions committee, because the committee doesn’t know what kind of standards were enforced at the high school in question: what does a B in algebra mean from this school as compared to that school? But to be honest, transcripts from home schoolers are usually so badly done as to be worthless.

To begin with, home school transcripts often come across as unreal. I can’t tell you how many applications I have reviewed from home schoolers with straight A’s for all four years of high school! The parent may be afraid that a poor grade on the transcript will reduce the odds of their child’s admission, but this isn’t true at all. In real life lots of people get good grades in this and poor grades in that, and the committee sees it all the time: lots and lots of people who got a C in algebra succeed in college! But more than that, the straight-A transcript doesn’t help because just gets lost in the flood of home schooled straight-A transcripts the committee reviews every year. It’s meaningless.

But, you may object, my child really is bright and hardworking and really has earned A’s in all his courses! Great: here is your chance to give the admissions committee something even more useful than a transcript from a public or private school.

Transcripts usually just list courses and grades: it would be too complicated for a big educational institution to do more. But this leaves the admissions committee wondering: What does “English” mean at this school? What is “American History”? And for that matter, what was taught in “Algebra”? If you can simply list the textbooks and source texts used in your home school courses, you’ll be way ahead of the pack. As an admissions committee member, I am not impressed that your student took “English”: everybody does. But if I see that your child has read Shakespeare and Twain and a bunch of other authors I recognize, I will feel like I understand your child’s accomplishment.

Next, say something about how your child was graded. What standards and rules were enforced? I sometimes come across statements like this in a college application from a home schooler: “We have had no set deadlines for assignments.” I wish you would have set deadlines for some things, so your child can practice what it will be like to perform under pressure at college; there is an art to handling a deadline, and it is an art learned only through experience. But still, I appreciate that the parent explained the standard used, because that gives me a better sense of what the grades on the transcript mean.

Here is another statement I sometimes come across: “We had no grading scale; we did things until they were correct.” It’s good that the parent explained how the grading standard worked—I wish every transcript would be so explicit!—but I would urge this parent to consider reflecting different levels of achievement somehow on the transcript. If your child did A-level work on the first try in English Composition but had to re-do his work eight times to get an A in Math, that is relevant information for the admissions committee, and being open with the committee avoids that impression of unrealism I mentioned above.

Whatever your standards are, make them explicit to the admissions committee either in the letter of reference or in a page attached to the transcript. Your transcript may be the only truly useful transcript the committee reviews this year!

But all the indirect testimony in the world, be it a letter of reference, a transcript, or even a standardized test, cannot replace the witness of your student’s own work. In my next post, I’ll share a couple of thoughts about the role of the student essay in the college application.

In this post, I want to focus on how Mom or Dad can write a very compelling letter of reference for their child. The secret is very simple. Most reference letters from parents consist of vague and flabby statements like this:

“Bill was a joy to raise.”

Well, I hope so. It would be very sad if raising one of your children were other than a joy. But this comment fails to answer the fundamental question the admissions committee wants to answer: Does Bill have the ability to keep up in a demanding college curriculum? This statement is a little better:

“Steven is very bright and hard-working.”

This parent has at least tried to address the key question, but it is a simple assertion. The parent claims that Steven is bright, but how does the admissions committee know it is true? Admissions committees want to trust people, but you have to offer them evidence for what you say. This next claim comes even closer to the mark:

“Molly has always done well in school.”

This parent has offered some kind of evidence for the claim that Molly is bright: she has always done well in school. But notice how vague the evidence is: What does “done well” mean? By what standard has she “done well”? Did she do really well because she was never really challenged? There is still very little for the admissions committee to sink its teeth into.

To avoid all these problems, all you need to do is follow the Golden Rule of recommendation writing: show and tell! Doesn’t just tell your reader that your child is bright and hardworking, but show the reader by presenting concrete details. Let the reader see your child in action. Some examples will make my point clear.

Suppose a parent wants to say, “Sally is a good writer. She works hard at writing.” Much better would be what one mother wrote in an actual letter of reference:

Sally has always been a leader in my writers’ group, which has ranged in age from students several years older to students a few years younger. Many times, especially in the early years, the other students have contacted her during the week to ask for editing assistance on their papers, doubling and tripling her writing practice and awareness.

By telling Sally’s story with concrete details, this mom has given the admissions committee a chance to see for themselves that Sally is talented and hardworking. It’s as though the committee was there to see her in action!

For another example, suppose that a parent wants to say, “My son works hard even without my hanging over him.” How could that be put across with vivid detail? How can you show and tell? Consider this excerpt from an application I reviewed:

He wasn’t content to just learn to serve the Extraordinary Form of the Mass; he read Adrian Fortesque’s thick manual on the subject and proceeded to choreograph and teach his fellow servers in the way a coach teaches plays to a team (to our busy pastor’s delight). And, de facto, he became our parish’s first (and probably most respected) authoritative emcee for the EF since Summorum Pontificum.

By telling a vivid story, these parents have overcome the impression that their judgment is subjective and biased. And they have taken advantage of the fact that no one knows those vivid details about the applicant as well as the parent: this is a strength the outside letter of reference does not have.

But of course, the letter of reference is only one opportunity to offer rich detail about your student’s education. In my next post, I will talk about how the homeschooled parent can put together a high school transcript that is actually helpful to the college admissions committee.

This time, my topic is the letter of reference. And to begin, I want to urge you to get one letter of reference from the “outside,” that is, from someone who only worked with the student in a professional capacity—not Mom or Dad or the neighbor.

Of course, to get such a letter of reference your student will have to have some kind of out-of-the-home experience, but I have found that this is a good thing to do anyway. It’s a great confidence booster. My wife came from a family of very gifted children, and comparing herself with her brothers she thought that she was probably not smart enough to go to college. One semester at the local community college cured her of that illusion! And then as a bonus, it does also open up the possibility of an outside letter of reference.

A letter from outside the family offers a college admissions committee a couple of advantages that Mom’s letter can’t match. First, someone who teaches in a high school or a college can recommend the applicant based on a comparison with a much larger group. Mom may home school a dozen kids, but someone who teaches in an institution will have taught several hundred or even a thousand children, and it sets that teacher up to make some strong statements for the applicant. Consider this line from a real letter of reference: “I have taught in a variety of educational settings: public, private, and home school at both secondary and elementary levels. Rarely have I taught a student who is this capable on all fronts.” That is a phenomenal witness!

A second advantage the outside letter of reference bring is, for lack of a better word, objectivity. Even though Dad or Mom may succeed in being brutally honest about their child, the admission committee members know in the back of their minds that the parent writing the recommendation letter stands to benefit if the student is accepted. When the letter comes from someone who has only known the student in a professional capacity, that person doesn’t stand to win or lose by the student’s acceptance. Whether or not it’s fair, the admissions committee will feel that this is a more objective testimony.

But if you can’t get an outside letter of reference, don’t despair. Even if you can get an outside letter of reference, it’s still a good idea to have Mom or Dad write one, because the parents have one advantage no one else can match. In the next post, I’ll explain what that advantage is.